Page 77 - The Handbook of Persuasion and Social Marketing

70 The Handbook of Persuasion and Social Marketing

government into an instrument designed to sustain an elected official’s
public popularity.
The permanent marketing campaign contains three key elements: politi-
cian/party message development, message dissemination, and relationship
building. Message development refers to distinguishing particular groups of
voters for whom an individualized and appropriate campaign platform will
be designed. Determining voter segments is a process in which all voters are
broken down into segments or groupings that the candidate then targets
with a particular message. In political marketing, one can distinguish two
levels of voter segmentation: primary and secondary (Cwalina et al., 2009).
The primary segmentation focuses on dividing voters based on two main
criteria: (1) voter party identification (particular party partisanship versus
independency), and (2) voter identification strength (from heavy partisans
through weak partisans to floating voters). Looking at the marketing cam-
paign holistically, its goal should be to reinforce the decisions of the support-
ers and to win the support of those who are uncertain or whose preferences
are not crystallized and those who still hesitate or have poor identification
with a candidate or party that is close ideologically. It is these groups of vot-
ers that require more study—the secondary segmentation.
After identifying voting segments, one needs to define the candidate’s
position in each of the multiple stages in the process of positioning. This
consists of assessing the candidate’s and opponents’ strengths and weak-
nesses. The key elements here include: (1) creating an image of the candi-
date that emphasizes the individual’s particular personality traits, and (2)
developing and presenting a clear position on the country’s economic and
social issues. These elements may be used jointly for positioning politi-
cians via policies on issues or via image and emotions. The goal of message
development is to set and establish the campaign platform. It evolves over
the course of the permanent political campaign (during both the election
period and the governing period). The campaign platform is defined in
terms of candidate leadership, image, and the issues and policies the can-
didate advocates. It is influenced by several factors, including the candi-
date, the people in the candidate’s organization, the party, and, most
important, the voters.
The established political or party message is then communicated to the
voter market. A personal (direct) campaign primarily refers to the grass-
roots effort necessary to build up a volunteer network to handle the day-
to-day activities of running the campaign. The grassroots effort becomes
the first information channel to transmit the candidate’s message from the
candidate’s organization to the voters, and to transmit feedback from the
voters to the candidate.